How a Fintech starts up: Lykke Project at a Glance

So-called Fintech is so attractive for those who want to build their own journeys with their own financial technology products. Those who are interested in either technology or finance really want to connect these two fabulous worlds together in order to handle financial problems. As a result, Fintech stories are being widely-spread among the industry. Below is a story from Sergey Ivliev, the co-founder of a global blockchain marketplace Lykke Corp. on his LinkedIn page.

Sergey Ivliev – Co-founder of Lykke Corp., building a global marketplace for all asset classes and financial instruments.

Sergey Ivliev’s starting point of Lykke project

“If I was told a year ago that I quit almost 20-year long top-management well-paid job in Prognoz and jump into the water of FinTech I wouldn’t merely believe.

It looked something like from the other planet: blockchains, colored coins, smart contracts…

Things however can change very fast (even when they go in the right direction). So we started Lykke, with a drive from Richard Olsen!

Lykke is project to build a global marketplace on blockchain that everyone can access. So that any issuers (banks or non-financial companies or may be even central bank) could secure their assets (‘I-Owe-You’s) and all the people on the planet (with smartphones) are able to trade and directly own these assets. No multiple intermediaries, no old legacy systems, no T+N days delivery.”

Sergey Ivliev & his team are working out Lykke

“So, what we’ve been doing last months to approach this dream?

Firstly, we assembled a great team. We’ve been lucky that people from many countries, including Switzerland, Russia, UK, Germany and Iran, joined Lykke. This couldn’t be possible without the open nature of Lykke community and Design competition that we had launched in the fall 2015.

Secondly, we follow the flow. Yes, there are milestones and initial strategic vision, but when you try to build something complex from scratch you need to be creative and agile. And you have a chance not to limit yourself with constraints of past experience. The vision will be evolving with every new meeting and every new contributing team member. Sometimes at 90 degrees.

Thirdly, we attack the technical challenge to merry the superfast matching engine (able to process >2 mln.events per second) with a supersecure distributed ledger of bitcoin blockchain. The vision is actually to build offchain P2P settlement inspiried by Lightning Network. If the things plays out well we will be able to launch High-Frequency Trading on blockchain with real-time DVP; And

Fourthly, we believe that design will save the world. The years of developing hi-tech apps in Prognoz have taught that the app is similarly as good as it works and as it looks.

Lykke is coming

“So we started with mobile-only Lykke Wallet, where everyone can easily onboard (simply a selfie and ID/POA photo), deposit bitcoins (VISA/MasterCard and bank wires to follow after we get regulatory approval), trade major FX pairs and withdraw funds. All with 0% comission.

So like in Skype where the world can talk for free, in Lykke the world can trade for free.

The v.1.0 alpha is released. Beta will become available in a week or so for closed testing, in App Store expectedly in May.